Prof Parveen Singh Anit
It is very easy to get offended nowadays, easier perhaps than giving out the reasoning or views explaining exactly how this taking of offense thing works. In pluralistic society, it is perhaps impossible to conceive of an idea which would be acceptable to everyone in its totality. With the coming of internet and mobiles, the dissemination of ideas has become ubiquitous. The fact is that it takes serious scholarship to churn out academic works, whereas to become emotionally hurt, merely a click on the digital world is required today.
It is in fact a reflection of the increasing in toleration and radicalisation of the society when we cannot accept books in their entirety merely because its ideas don’t conform to our world view. It’s true that being hurt doesn’t take much of a reason, but the true mark of an open and rational society is to what extent they can incorporate divergent views, no matter how perverse they sound and then to debate about it, rather than repressing the very thought.
Freud would have had some interesting material to say on this. Isn’t the thing we most intensely fear from inside the one which we cannot see coming out in the open. His own case reflects the advantages of an open society. No matter how offensive his theory sounded to the puritanical sect of orthodoxy, he wasn’t locked up and his books burnt for brining a radical world view. He would go on to revolutionise the psychology of human mind forever.
Living in close quarters with every possible hue of human society, it is often the case that jostling for mental space would in its due course frither some elbows, knees and heads. It is not entirely without a sound argument that the author would have put his point forward. Even if what has been written is complete and utter untruth, ought not we to dispense it with scientific rigour and then establish whether its wrong per se or right.
The problem with religion is that it is entirely faith based. The evidences that are used are more likely secondary in nature and even then they are inductive not deductive. Their validity and reliability are more akin to a jingoistic affair than the employment of reasoning. Any attempt to reason a religious belief, has ultimately led to the use of mind washing and propaganda by the custodians of religions (who incidentally are also the custodians of the money that people give) and annihilation of the opposition through muscle power.
In a society given naturally to a collective orientation like ours, it perhaps goes without saying that majority of the people identify themselves with the religion they have, the place to which they belong and the culture of which they are a part. It is in this context that the questions on their beliefs be analysed. It goes without saying that when you try to challenge the homeostasis of a person, their identity even; they are going to revolt against it. Their emotions, mental state and their cardinal beliefs would never care for a rational line of thought, almost like trying to convince a child that his favourite candy is bad for him.
For all the statements that have been made against religions, probably one by Darwin was the most interesting, “it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science”. In the present context Darwin’s words ring louder than ever before. It is not the cultural anthropologists or students of philosophy who are bound to raise their objections on the works of authors such as Tasleema, Rushdie and Dongiers. Rather, the protests come from the lobby of the religionists who claim to represent the common man and his hurt emotions. How many of these common men would have even read these works, is another story.
If Copernicus was censored, if works of Galileo were forever lost, if Siddhartha was never allowed to speak and if the views of the powerful had always remained dominant on the pretext of their combined hurt feelings and we would have forever remained in the caves with fires burning in front of it so that no other human could enter our territory or teach us something which goes against the known.
Truly, it wouldn’t be right to say that all the works ever produced had noble principles enshrined in them. The derogatory video of Prophet Muhammad which had caused quite an uproar last year, couldn’t have in the wildest sense fulfilled a quest for furthering our knowledge. It is precisely those kinds of works that should be a cause for hurt sentiments. But, if someone tries to present a new world view or advance a line of thought, then it is the academic arguments that can prove it wrong and never the pyrrhic virulence that has mired us in our impenetrable cocoons.
(The author is HOD, Department of Computer Sciences)
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